


Life Would Be A Party

by Vae



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Canon Queer Character, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-30
Updated: 2011-01-30
Packaged: 2017-10-15 05:57:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/157719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vae/pseuds/Vae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New Year is a great excuse for a reunion party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life Would Be A Party

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a pinch hit for kradam_holidays on LiveJournal 2010, for bubby_wubby who asked for a beach scene and a kitchen/food scene - I’m afraid I’ve never seen 9-1/2 weeks so hopefully this kitchen scene will do instead! Thanks to my betas, lvs2read and the wonderfully helpful sbb23 - you guys made this so much better.

\--*--*--

"This," Adam said firmly, "has been the most surreal year ever."

Finishing the year by spending New Year's Eve on a beach with half of the guys from the Idol Season 8 tour along with his touring band _and_ Brad and Cassidy and Danielle wasn't even the most surreal part of it. He didn't usually hit the LA beaches in December at all, but Kris had insisted that if it was over sixty degrees, it was beach weather, and Adam still didn't have the will to say no when those puppy eyes got turned on him. Plus it was kind of a novelty, and he'd always loved novelty.

"You said that last year," Brad pointed out, pushing entirely unnecessary sunglasses up his nose.

"Last year was the most surreal year ever last year." And this year had way surpassed it. He looked out past Brad towards the shoreline. Someone had found a Frisbee and Kris was looking unfairly tempting stretching up to catch it.

Cassidy looped an arm around Adam's shoulders and rested his head against Adam's arm. "Looking forward to next year?"

Adam glanced down, forcing himself to look away from the way-too-beautiful sight of Kris in board shorts that were apparently being held up by nothing more than hope and prayers (and definitely not his prayers). "I'm kinda happy with right now."

Brad snorted. Adam ignored him.

Dani pressed up against Adam's other side. "You could be a lot happier though, right?"

There was no point even trying to pretend he didn't get what she meant. "I don't have time to be happier right now. I mean, there's the whole surreal thing."

"Fuck that, bitch." Brad slid his sunglasses down far enough to glare at Adam over the top of them. "Everyone has time to be happy. If surreal isn't happy, you need to change surreal."

Surreal was a second album that had gone stratospheric. Surreal was getting his whole band from the first tour back together so they could travel the world again, bigger venues, bigger crowds, and finally decent notice from the music press. Surreal was a fucking Grammy Award that he hadn't thought he'd even had a chance of winning since he'd been up against Michael Jackson (though of course he was deeply honored to have been nominated). Surreal was non-stop concerts and promotional appearances and interviews and photo shoots and the most amazing year ever with nowhere near enough time for his friends in it.

Adam stared at Tommy Joe getting a Frisbee in the back of his head and Isaac snatching it up to enact revenge on a whooping Kris and Allison. He couldn't imagine surreal going away anytime soon, or even wanting it to.

He needed to change surreal.

Dani shoved her elbow into his ribs. "Stop daydreaming, princess. How long have you been in love with him now?"

He couldn't pretend he didn't know who Dani meant by ‘he', either. "Two years and change."

It wasn't like he hadn't tried to not be in love with Kris. He'd dated, he'd played around, he'd taken random Europeans to random European cities, he'd even managed a relationship for three disastrous months back in the summer, but it always came back to the same problem. The problem that got divorced back around about the time he'd started dating Todd.

Okay, kind of exactly the same day he'd started dating Todd, but that had totally been a coincidence. Really.

"He's been divorced nine months now," Cassidy said quietly. "What are you afraid of?"

It was a good question. There were way too many answers. Though seriously, there was one big one. "He's straight."

Brad laughed. "Your gaydar _so_ needs retuning."

\--*--*--

The beach party was cut short, as Adam had pretty much expected it to be, by paparazzi showing up. Just one or two was okay, he was pretty much used to there being one or two any time he was in a public place, but when they started forming a crowd, it was so time to call it a day. There was an evening planned, anyway.

His house wasn't the biggest in Hollywood by a long shot, but it was big enough to absorb his friends. Brad took charge of the sound system ("because none of you reality TV bitches know what real music should sound like") and settled in to argue with Dani about what good music actually meant. Cassidy claimed the couch and curled up with Tommy, which meant Isaac and Allison on the floor by their feet, which in turn meant Matt and Anoop around Allison.

On his way through to the kitchen, Adam caught sight of Megan deep in conversation with Lisa and Monte, and veered swiftly away when he overheard the seriously uninviting phrase ‘potty training'. He loved kids. He loved Monte and Lisa's kids, even, he just didn't need to know that much about their personal plumbing, and definitely not about how Ryder's had changed.

Kris and Cam were already in the kitchen. Adam paused, trying to figure out what they were doing as Cam put her hand over Kris's on the kitchen counter, fingers moving... kind of together and then not as they both laughed. Kris shook his head, grinned up at Cam and Adam firmly told his traitorous ego that a) he had no right to be jealous over Kris and b) even if he had, Cam was a lesbian and hello, Kris was straight, no matter what Brad insinuated. Nothing was going to be going on between the straight guy and the lesbian in his kitchen.

Kris put his hand on top of Cam's and nodded. The movement began again and Adam watched their fingers move, an oddly hypnotic sequence that he gradually realized was repeating until Kris slid his hand under Cam's and the pattern slipped into another repeat. At which point Adam realized that lurking silently in his own kitchen and watching them without speaking was kind of creepy and stalkerish.

"Private party?" he said lightly. "Or can anyone join in?"

Cam looked back at him with a grin. "Don't even think about it, I've tried to teach you keyboard."

"You too?" Kris laughed and moved away from Cam towards Adam, completely unselfconscious. "At least it wasn't as bad as the time Adam decided he wanted to learn guitar."

"Hey!" Adam objected. Okay, so maybe the guitar thing had come along with some ideas about Kris wrapped around him and Kris's hands on his on the decidedly phallic neck of a guitar that had actually turned out to be distracting and kind of painful when he started getting calluses, but he hadn't sucked _that_ badly.

Right. Keyboard. They'd been doing some kind of fingering thing on his kitchen counter. (That should have offered way more scope for innuendo.)

"You were never meant to play an instrument," Cam told him firmly. "Hey, is Alli still around?"

Kris patted Adam's arm. "It's okay, man, your voice is like your instrument."

It was kind of sweet that Kris thought he needed reassuring. Sweeter that it got him touched. "Alli's in the living room. You wanna take another bottle of the red with you? It's what I came out for."

Cam nodded, reaching up easily to pull another bottle from the wine rack. "Are you coming back in?"

"Soon." Not yet. "Just wanna catch up some with my boy first."

Kris laughed and helped himself to another beer as Cam headed out. "You couldn't do that this afternoon?"

"You were way too busy with the Frisbee," Adam pointed out, found another bottle of red wine, and started looking around for the corkscrew. "And we haven't had a chance to catch up since you only flew in this morning."

"Yeah, well." Kris shrugged, a movement nowhere near as loose as Adam knew it could be. "Family, Christmas... you know how it goes."

"I really don't." Ha. Corkscrew. Adam twisted it in and uncorked the bottle with an audible pop. "We don't even really do Hanukkah."

"Seriously?" Kris asked, holding his hand out for the corkscrew.

Adam looked down at it, worked out there was actually a bottle opener on there as well, and handed it over. "Seriously. I mean, it's only like a few weeks after Thanksgiving, which is kinda the big holiday in my family."

Kris flipped the top off his beer bottle, caught it neatly, and dropped it in the trash before taking a pull. "What do you do around Christmas, then?"

The conversation was in serious danger of getting derailed from Kris and catching up and Christmas. "Cass has a big party for the solstice. It's a friends thing instead of family. So how was the old homestead?"

"Same old same old." Another shrug, smaller, tighter. "I mean, it was never gonna be the most fun year ever."

Adam raised his eyebrows. "Are you trying to hold out on me, Kristopher Allen? Because you know I _will_ call your mom..."

"You want me to call yours and tell her that her son's got no manners?" Kris retorted.

"Ooh, touchy." Which meant, yeah, he'd touched a nerve. "Seriously, honey..."

"Seriously, Adam." Kris looked up at him, hair falling across his brow. "You wanna talk about this now? New Year's Eve? At your party?"

"Like that's even a question." He filled his glass and reached out for Kris's hand, tugging him further into the corner of the kitchen and away from the door. "So there _is_ something to talk about."

"Yeah, there's..." Kris looked down, away, one finger rubbing against a loose edge of the label on his beer bottle. "It's the first time I was home for more than a couple of days since the divorce, you know? And it's not like they're disappointed in me or anything like that but..."

"But it's kind of worse than if they were," Adam completed. "Right?"

Kris nodded. "Right. And I guess there's never a good time to come out to your parents, but Christmas has to be pretty high up there on the bad times list."

Wait. What?

"I mean, I waited until after Christmas day, but..." Kris's lips quirked into something that someone who knew him less well might have mistaken for a smile. "Happy New Year, huh?"

The kitchen was so not the right place for this talk. Adam wasn't sure that there was any right place for this talk, but the kitchen wasn't it. Especially not the kitchen with a whole bunch of their friends in the living room. "Happy New Year," he agreed softly. "Kris... back up a step for me here. You came out to your parents?"

"And my brother, yeah. And Pop and Auntie Anna." The smile wasn't getting any more convincing. "I think they were the only ones who were surprised, though maybe Pop wasn't sure what I was talking about. I figured I needed to tell them first, though."

"Tell them what?" Probably not the most helpful question, either, but Adam was kind of invested in the answer. Also still holding Kris's hand. He took a deep swallow of his wine, letting the alcohol warm through him. Kris couldn't be gay. _Couldn't_ be. He'd seen Kris with Katy, seen them together, that had been too genuine to be faked for cameras even if he could believe that either of them would ever think to try, and too real and too intimate to be platonic. But Kris had said he'd come out, which usually meant...

Kris took a deep breath, shoulders rising with it enough for Adam to know that it wasn't a full breath. Not properly supported, not from his diaphragm, only from his chest and probably tight with it. "That I'm bi," he said simply. "I mean, I always was, but it wasn't relevant because there was always Katy and she was all I ever wanted and then..."

"Then LA happened to you both." It wasn't the first time he'd seen LA tear a relationship apart. Shit, it had happened to him and Brad and him and Drake and okay, maybe not him and Todd because Todd had just been a raging asshole and a distraction that hadn't worked.

"No, man." Kris shook his head, mouth set. "Not LA. We happened to us. I mean, Katy and me happened to us, not... us." He gestured awkwardly between Adam and himself. "Like, people change, right? Not the fundamentals of them, not the soul, but people change when life happens to them and I changed and she changed and we just didn't change together."

It still sounded like LA to Adam, considering how much LA and Idol had happened to Kris and, by extension, Katy. "I guess you guys married pretty young," he said carefully.

"And we'd been dating for like, forever." Some of the tension went from Kris's shoulders. "We didn't really know who we were without each other. I mean, we weren't with each other all the time but we were both aiming for the same thing and then we weren't and I guess we just didn't fit back again. It's not a failure."

That Kris was even mentioning that word meant someone had mentioned it to _him_ , and that made Adam's fingers tighten on the stem of his wine glass. He reached behind him, setting it down securely on the counter, and pushed it further back away from the edge. "Of course it's not. You guys were together for years, you were good together." And no matter how many times he'd fantasized about Kris, he'd never wanted Kris to lose what he had with Katy. "You were beautiful together."

"Until we weren't." Kris hesitated, then put his beer bottle down next to Adam's glass, turned, and planted his face in Adam's shoulder. "It was the right thing."

"Sure it was, baby." Adam wrapped his arms around Kris, heart aching, and rubbed Kris's back, slow and warm. "Better than staying and ripping each other apart. Trust the voice of experience on that one."

The sound Kris made could have been a laugh, maybe. All Adam was sure of was that it was a huff of breath, warm through his shirt. "Yeah, I guess."

"You want the wise stuff, ask Cassidy," Adam told Kris firmly and stopped rubbing just to hold on. "But seriously, you've got more of the good memories and less of the bad." And thank fuck there weren't kids caught up in the mess. "That's not a bad thing, it's really not a failure, it's knowing when to walk away so you _can_ hold onto the good times."

"And find new ones." Kris's voice was muffled by Adam's shirt but still comprehensible. " _Make_ new ones."

"Totally." Adam kissed Kris's hair. "New year, new start." And hopefully not the kind that 2012 had had as a movie, shit, the exposure had been useful and the video shoot had been fun but the movie had seriously sucked in not good ways.

"Yeah." Kris's back shifted under Adam's hands with a deep breath that Adam could _feel_ was nowhere near steady. "Adam?"

"You want your beer back?" It was a guess, but anything else Kris would just come out and say, right?

Kris shook his head, hair rubbing against Adam's shoulder until Kris moved back. Just half a step, not enough to break contact, but enough that Kris could look up at Adam. "Not right now. Can I kiss you?"

Holy shit.

It was. Okay. Not. Kind of. Totally not what Adam had been expecting. Sure, he'd thought about kissing Kris, wanted to, but he'd never thought that asking might be involved. Or if it was, then asking that was a lot more of the intimate, already-got-his-hands-on-Kris's-face, completely-and-totally-sure-of-the-answer kind of asking. Also, usually him asking Kris. And he needed to say something right the fuck now before Kris started thinking that the answer might be no. "Like, for New Year? At midnight?"

"I wasn't gonna wait that long." There was something about Kris's expression, some kind of determination that Adam couldn't quite read. "I thought more like... right now." Kris tilted his head, eyes closing slightly, which was all kinds of unfair considering that it made him look even more kissable than he already did. "Only you're kind of a giant so I can't reach."

And wasn't going to be able to until Adam figured out what was going on because he was pretty sure that once he kissed Kris - holy fuck he was going to kiss Kris, like, actually - he wasn't going to want to stop. He'd be _able_ to, but he sure as hell wouldn't want to. "To find out what it's like?"

Kris rolled his eyes and reached up to link his hands around the back of Adam's neck. "No wonder you're not dating much if you're this much work. Why'd you usually kiss someone?"

"Because I want to," Adam said automatically. "And because I think they wanna kiss me back."

"So..." Kris looked at him expectantly. "You wanna call someone else I've kissed for a reference?"

Jealousy was _so_ not the appropriate response to that, especially not when it had come out in that slow drawl that Kris usually only came out with when he was seriously tired or on his way to drunk. "Can we not talk about your ex-wife right now?"

Kris arched an eyebrow at Adam, his eyes bright, looking like he was trying not to smirk. (He wasn't succeeding very well.) "I wasn't talking about Katy."

Oh. _Oh_. That meant... "Kristopher Allen, have you been kissing boys and not telling me about it?"

"I didn't know you last time I kissed a guy." Kris's other eyebrow went up to join the first. "I was kinda hoping for the next time to be before we both die of old age..."

Adam's brain took about three seconds to process that a) Kris had kissed guys before, b) it was in the distant past, c) Kris was in his kitchen, in his arms, wanting to be kissed, and d) he _wasn't kissing Kris_. His body took about one second more to remedy the last, left arm tightening around Kris to pull him in close again, right hand lifting to cradle Kris's face, thumb resting against his cheek. No more hesitation, no checking if Kris was sure because apparently Kris was really fucking sure, and apparently that really fucking turned Adam on.

He rubbed his fingers lightly into Kris's hair, dipped his head, and finally, _finally_ kissed him.

First kiss, familiar kiss, everything about it was new and everything about it was familiar. He knew the way Kris felt in his arms, knew the way Kris's hair smelled, knew the way Kris relaxed with physical contact and pressed closer. He knew how much Kris committed himself entirely to whatever he was doing, that amazing focus that he'd found so erotic when it was bent on music, but having it turned on him that way... shit, there were no words. No words for the way Kris's mouth slanted against his, opened to him, tasted: the faint bitter-wheat of beer in the slick curl of Kris's tongue inviting him in. That was all new and all welcome and all _incredible_ , learning the warm sounds Kris made in the back of his throat, something that sounded like pleasure and impatience rolled together, husky desire that Adam echoed with a soft growl and a curl of his fingers to press his nails gently against Kris's scalp, and holy fuck, the reaction that got. This close, there was no escaping the way Kris pushed up and into him, and definitely no missing the fact that, inside the criminally loose-fitting jeans, Kris's dick was really, really happy with the kiss and really, really wanted to get to know Adam better.

Adam really, really wanted to get to know Kris's dick better, too. Though possibly not in his kitchen while a whole group of his friends were in the next room.

He let go of Kris's face but not the kiss, and slid his hand down to curl around the back of Kris's neck for just long enough to reassure Kris that he so wasn't stopping kissing. Just touching more, skimming his hand down over Kris's back and down to his ass, because he might be able to remember that groping Kris's dick was a bad idea but he'd been resisting the urge to grope that beautiful ass for fucking years and now he _could_ , hand over Kris's jeans although he'd finally realized the one advantage of loose jeans was that he'd be able to get his hand in there without anything coming off. That was something he definitely wanted to explore another time. Several other times. For now, though, he could actually, legitimately get his hand on Kris's ass, feel the warmth of him, the tight curve of muscle that was only more tempting as he got better acquainted and not only because of the way Kris squirmed against him, rocking forwards for a moment first before arching back and pushing into Adam's hand.

Okay. Stopping. No, really, they had to stop, Adam knew they had to stop. They had to stop soon, very soon, because if they didn't stop soon then -

"They're in the kitchen!"

Adam stopped. Hand still firmly on Kris's ass, other arm still keeping Kris pressed against him, he lifted his head to glare at the interruption and found Tommy grinning unrepentantly at him. Adam flipped him off with the hand not on Kris's ass. (It had taken him long enough to get there. He wasn't relinquishing it that easily.) "Busy here. Fuck off?"

"Fucking took you guys long enough," Tommy said, supremely unconcerned. "You're out of beer."

That still wasn't worth the interruption, in Adam's opinion, but was apparently enough to get Kris wriggling around and leaning back against him. Adam hastily moved his hand higher before it accidentally landed on Kris's dick. When that happened, it was totally going to be deliberate. Very deliberate. And without Tommy watching.

"Out of beer?" Kris echoed, accent stronger than usual. There was something about his voice, slower, kind of deeper, kind of rough, all kinds of hot. Adam spared a moment to be grateful that Kris was blocking Tommy's view of the almost-definitely-noticeable bulge in his jeans. Not that it would have been the first time that Tommy had seen Adam sporting wood, but still.

Adam firmly suppressed the urge to cover Kris's dick with his hand anyway when he saw Tommy's eyes tracking downwards. Kris's t-shirt was long enough to hide most of the evidence, and Kris was the one who'd chosen to turn around. "Out of beer is not an emergency," Adam said firmly. "Out of champagne would be an emergency."

"Yeah, well, if you don't have more beer somewhere, people are gonna start on the champagne already." Tommy shrugged. "And you guys have been in here for-fucking-ever, you're lucky I'm the one who came looking for you."

"You call this lucky?" Adam shook his head. Lucky would have been uninterrupted.

"It could have been Alli," Kris pointed out.

That was ...kind of true. And Alli would have been way less chill about it than Tommy. "Or Brad," Adam realized, since that would probably have ended up starting an orgy in his kitchen again. He sighed and loosened his hold on Kris. "Okay, shit, did you look in the closet?"

"Like you've only got one." Tommy dropped his empty bottle into the crate on the floor. "C'mon, gimme a hint here."

Kris pressed back against Adam for one sweet moment then went off with Tommy in search of beer. Adam held his breath long enough to will away enough of his erection to be able to walk straight, and went to check on the safety of the champagne that was set aside for midnight.

\--*--*--

There was, in fact, more beer. It wasn't even in the kitchen, which intensified Adam's resentment of Tommy's interruption even though, logically, he knew they couldn't have gone much further or stayed much longer in the kitchen. There was talking to be done, though, definite talking to be done, because kisses like that didn't just happen out of nowhere and they definitely didn't just stop out of nowhere when they got interrupted with no clarity about whether they were ever going to happen again.

Freshly re-beered, Tommy had gone contentedly enough back to Cassidy, and Adam had hoped to be able to corner Kris again and sort out what the fuck had happened and, more importantly, what the fuck was going to happen and when, but Kris was sprawled in one corner of his couch with Allison curled up next to him and Matt leaning over the arm of the couch on his other side. Adam was pretty sure that he'd be able to extract Kris from one or other of them without raising suspicions, but probably not both. He didn't want to raise any suspicions until he was sure that Kris was okay with there being something to be suspicious _of_. After all, Kris had asked to kiss him. Not date him.

A warm body pressed up against his side, and Adam looped an arm around it automatically, identifying Brad from the familiarity of the touch before the process of elimination could kick in. "Hey, princess."

"Frog," Brad returned promptly. " _Some_ body's looking fucking glum for a guy who just got to second base with his prince."

Oh, fuck, Tommy. "What does that even mean?"

"Fuck if I know, all I know about baseball is the players' pants aren't as tight as football players' pants." Brad shrugged. "But you at least kissed him, right?"

Adam made himself stop watching the way Matt was leaning closer and closer to Kris's lap. "Right."

Brad looked positively gleeful. "And it wasn't all hearts and flowers and bluebirds? Oh, honey, make my night, tell me Pocket Idol's a shitty kisser."

"Don't call him that," Adam said automatically. He knew it didn't bother Kris, but it still bothered him. Both of them had come a long way, musically and personally, since the whole Idol media circus had ended and the new one began.

"You so don't want to know the other things I call him," Brad promised, fingers patting against Adam's ribs in something dangerously close to tickling. "So what's wedging _your_ panties up your crack?"

Adam sighed and turned away from the sight of Matt practically _in_ Kris's lap. "I wanna do it again."

"Well, duh." Brad steered him expertly out of the room and into the hallway. Stairs, Adam remembered, memory suddenly looming up iceberg-like through the fog of merlot. Brad had always had a thing about stairs. "You wanna get it right next time."

"Oh, fuck you," Adam said tiredly, climbed halfway up, and flopped down on the stairs. "It was right. It was so fucking right."

"So?" Brad dropped down on a lower step and twisted around to lean against Adam's legs, arms resting on his knee, looking up at him. "Kiss him again. And don't try to tell me it's not that simple, honey, because it _is_ that simple. The only person making it complicated is you, as fucking usual."

Kris had said something similar. Adam wrapped an arm around Brad's shoulders, folding down over his own knees to reach. "Am I that much work?"

"More," Brad said immediately. "But you're worth it."

Adam laughed. "You sound like a commercial. Seriously?"

Brad rolled his eyes. "Remember that whole discussion about how your insecurities are no longer mine to stroke away? Yeah, you're high maintenance, that's so not news to, like, anyone who's got past your public face ever. Now get your sparkle on and go get your man before he decides I'm trying to steal you away from him or some shit."

"That ship hasn't just sailed, it's cruising the Caribbean." He kissed Brad's forehead and uncurled, reaching out for the banister to support him as he stood up. "Champagne time?"

Ten to midnight, and Kris silhouetted in the light spilling from the doorway to the living room. Kris, alone, in the doorway to the living room. Without Matt.

"And that," Brad said, sliding down a step before standing up, "is my cue to go find that champagne."

Adam nodded absently, and didn't move until a slap to his thigh startled him into motion, down two stairs before he caught himself.

"Sparkle," Brad hissed fiercely, and went.

Silence stretched across the hallway that really wasn't as big as Adam's imagination was making it. Sparkling was going to have to be left to Brad and the champagne at least for a few minutes. All Adam could do was to walk down the last few stairs, hold his hand out to Kris in invitation, and pray that Kris would meet him halfway and take it.

The sound of talking and music flowed out into the hallway, laughter and shrieks and a steady, pulsing electronic beat that was nowhere near as strong or loud as Adam's own heartbeat, heavy in his chest until the moment Kris finally moved towards him, bypassed his hand, went up onto the first step of the stairs, and hugged him instead.

Adam remembered how to breathe.

"Cruising the Caribbean?" Kris asked with a grin.

Breathe _and_ relax, tension sagging out of his shoulders. "Permanently. Are you okay? How much did you hear?"

"Pretty much all of it," Kris admitted. "I came to look for you when I saw you leave with Brad because... well, yeah."

Adam could supply at least six different ending to that sentence, but he wasn't going to. "Because?"

"Because it's nearly midnight." Something that Adam was almost completely sure was Kris's hand smoothed warmth down his back and - okay, yeah, that had _better_ be Kris's hand. "I still haven't kissed you."

"You..." Adam leaned back slightly, eyebrows raised. "Were you not in the kitchen with me earlier? Because I don't know what you call a kiss, but that definitely felt like kissing to me."

Kris shook his head, still grinning, still looking eminently kissable. "You kissed me in the kitchen. This is better."

This was so not better. There was no kissing going on at _all_ although, in Adam's opinion, Kris's hand on his ass went a long way towards making up for that. "Can we just... is this just a friends who kiss thing?" Which would be cool, really, he had friends he kissed and that was awesome and he wouldn't trade them in for anything and kissing was fantastic. Just kissing for kissing could be amazing, but kissing for more, well, that was something else entirely. That was a whole world of better.

Kris's grin faded slightly. "Do you want it to be?"

"I was hoping more for friends who date," Adam admitted, then, bolder for the fact that, hello, Kris's _hand_ was still on his _ass_ , "and friends who have sex." Nothing ventured...

"Like... boyfriends?" Kris asked, face unreadable. Adam had thought he'd seen pretty much every variation of expression that Kris had, but that one was new and he was hoping it was a good one.

"Like boyfriends," he agreed, tension creeping back through his neck and down his spine. "If you want. I mean, fuck, Kris, you're like... it's not like it's any kind of secret that I've been crushing on you forever but I don't wanna just... not just a fling and lose everything."

Kris's lips twitched and it took Adam a couple moments longer to work out that he was trying not to laugh. "We've kissed _once_ and you're writing us off already? When there are two of your exes and however many guys you've made out with on stage in the next room?"

"They're different," Adam said stubbornly. "Fuck you, this is important."

"So?" Kris looked at him expectantly. "Important enough to go for it?"

Distantly, Adam could hear the countdown to midnight starting in the living room, music turned down enough that the sound of champagne corks popping in preparation was clearly audible. "You want this?"

"Yeah, I want this," Kris said steadily. "I want you. Us. Do you?"

The countdown reached three. Adam made a very swift New Year's resolution to get rid of one particular insecurity and therefore become less high maintenance, and wrapped his arm around Kris's waist. "Yeah," he agreed. "So shut up and kiss me already."

The expression on Kris's face was another new one to Adam, one a whole lot more readable and a seismic improvement on the last one he hadn't recognized. Happiness shining bright in the last second before he pushed in closer, took advantage of the extra height of the first step, and kissed Adam.

It was going to be a very happy, _very_ surreal new year.


End file.
